Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality, and to see the links to virtual rooms.

P11


Where and what is the 'global' water crisis in the Anthropocene? 
Convenors:
Filippo Menga (University of Bergamo)
Maria Rusca (The Global Development Institute)
Nathaniel Millington (University of Manchester)
Send message to Convenors
Chairs:
Filippo Menga (University of Bergamo)
Maria Rusca (The Global Development Institute)
Discussants:
Nathaniel Millington (University of Manchester)
Filippo Menga (University of Bergamo)
Format:
Panel
Stream:
Anthropocene thinking
Location:
Palmer 1.07
Sessions:
Wednesday 28 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London

Short Abstract:

This panel explores how the water crisis is framed and spatially unfolds in the Anthropocene. To this aim, it examines emerging dimensions of the water crisis, and considers how theorisations of the Anthropocene have re-shaped our understandings of the water crisis.

Long Abstract:

The popularity of the notion of the Anthropocene seems unstoppable. With it, comes the acknowledgment that environmental degradation and global warming foreshadow an approaching catastrophe that will diminish, if not devastate, life for future generations. The idea of the global water crisis fits well into this narrative. Water is both a global resource, which freely circulates in the atmosphere, and a local one, whose scarcity is felt most by local communities and users. Until recently, the 'global' water crisis was spatially unfolding in a generic and distant 'developing world'. But in the Anthropocene, the water crisis occurs in places that had been so far shielded from it, as evidenced by recent events in Europe and the United States. This is due to the combined workings of climate change and decades of underinvestment in hydraulic infrastructure, alongside broader patterns of austerity, infrastructural inequality, and uneven development.

In this panel we seek contributions that speak to how the water crisis unfolds in the Anthropocene. Submissions are invited on questions that include but are not limited to:

• How can we problematise the idea of the Anthropocene through a critical understanding of the global water crisis?

• What forms of environmental Orientalism mark the political discourse around the water crisis?

• How do discourses of the global water crisis intersect with localized infrastructural inequality and vulnerability?

• What are the discursive politics of global water crisis?

• Can comparative analysis offer insight into contemporary water crisis?

• How should we understand the relationship between water crisis and climate crisis?

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Wednesday 28 June, 2023, -
Session 2 Wednesday 28 June, 2023, -